Back to Search
Start Over
Generating a New Ohio River: Ecological Transformation in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
- Publication Year :
- 2019
-
Abstract
- Over the course of the nineteen and twentieth centuries, the Ohio River underwent an ecological transformation. This dissertation examines the various and competing visions for the Ohio River and how this transformation occurred through navigational and flood control engineering projects, extractive industries and pollution from expanding municipalities and industry. Its narrative begins in the early nineteenth century, when explorers and naturalists begin to explore the young United States’ Ohio Territory in the west. The 981-mile long river grew as a vital artery, as it allowed for movement from the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers in Pittsburgh to Cairo, Illinois, where the Ohio meets the Mississippi River. Settlement grew along the river’s banks, and the residents depended on the healthy river not only for transportation but as a clean water source as well. Hoping to earn profit, residents and business owners from outside the valley also sought to exploit the river’s resources, such as the freshwater mussels that lived in it. Industrial interests, such as that of coal, lobbied heavily to invest in infrastructural projects as well, from the removal of snags and dredging to permanent locks and dams, over the course of the nineteenth century. These programs, especially the creation of 52 locks and dams, resulted in the removal of habitats and a series of slack pools. With the arrival of railroads, though, the Ohio River began to lose its dominance and the visions for the Ohio River changed as a result. Increasingly, residents and businesses and demanded the federal government also invest in protection from river flooding, which grew in intensity and came to a head with the thousand-year 1937 flood, and pollution abatement programs. This resulted in further engineering of the river and the Ohio Valley with the creation of flood control structures that included levees and reservoirs in the twentieth century. It also led to the creation of a regional regulatory body, the Ohio River Valley Sanitation Commission in 1948. This involvement and hope for the remainder of the twentieth century is where the narrative ends.
- Subjects :
- History
history
environment
Ohio River
lock
dam
flood
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- Database :
- OpenDissertations
- Publication Type :
- Dissertation/ Thesis
- Accession number :
- ddu.oai.etd.ohiolink.edu.ucin1573571453097256